HAPPINESS, according to the old Chinese proverb, is watching your neighbour fall off his roof. So, for a Tory politician, you might have thought that the nearest thing to ecstasy was seeing Peter Mandelson sprayed with custard. At last the Prince of
Darkness gets his just desserts – boom, boom. But however tempting it may be to wallow in schadenfreude, my sympathies are actually with Lord M.
Not because I agree with him on the issue which, ostensibly, provoked the protest. No, like the custard hurler, I'm opposed to the planned expansion of Heathrow. Indeed, it is precisely because I think the case against the current Heathrow expansion is rooted in sober science, sound business logic and political prudence that I worry about the use of direct action by those on my side of the argument. Because direct action is for losers.
This year we mark the 25th anniversary of the miners' strike. Norman Tebbit argues Margaret Thatcher had to prevail in order to prevent the democratically elected Government being held to ransom. Lee Hall, the writer of Billy Elliot, argues that the pit closure programme inflicted terrible harm on communities whose spirit was broken forever. Both have a point. And the arguments will rage forever. But what is unarguable is that the decision by the National Union of Mineworkers leadership to call a strike without a ballot and take their fight on to the streets was doomed from the beginning.
If Arthur Scargill didn't have enough confidence in his case to believe he would prevail in an internal union ballot then it certainly wasn't going to be robust enough to convince the country. His hope that he could picket his way to victory was the clearest sign he'd already lost.
It's not just left-wing causes which betray their political weakness by taking to the streets. In Chris Mullin's newly published diaries, which detail his fascinating experiences as a Government minister under Tony Blair, there's a telling passage about the pro-hunting demonstration at the Labour Party conference in 1999.
Thousands besieged Bournemouth to defend their traditional way of life, in a curious echo of the miners' actions. But Mullin regarded the demonstration with relaxed detachment because, he noted, the banners borne aloft by the angry countrymen revealed they all came from the safest Tory seats in England.
The hunting people who took to the streets in such numbers did so knowing they were fighting a losing battle. The very fact of their direct action was an acknowledgement that subtle lobbying and logical argument had failed to defend their position. They were forced to make a poignant last stand for their way of life, knowing the votes were against them.
Advocates of direct action might argue I'm being selective. Yeah, Thatch might have seen off the miners, but the poll tax protestors got her in the end, didn't they? And Blair may have ignored the hunters, but the truckers did him over with the fuel strike? Well actually, no, in both cases.
The reason the poll tax harmed Margaret Thatcher so was not because of a riot in Trafalgar Square – she'd seen off many a riot before. It was the revolt of Middle England, not the revolutionary Marxists of the Anti Poll Tax Federation who ended her reign. The loss of previously rock-solid Mid-Staffordshire and Eastbourne in crushing by-election defeats were the factors which drove the Conservative parliamentary party into lady-killer mode.
Those who really suffered because of direct action against the poll tax were those on the Left who were desperately trying to reassure moderate voters they were respectable again. The anti-poll-tax antics of the militant wing of Labour caused agonies of embarrassment to douce bourgeois figures like Donald Dewar and John Smith.
And it wasn't just the poll tax. I also vividly recall the deep discomfort Donald and others felt at the direct action several Scottish Labour MPs indulged in after the 1992 election defeat. Some of Labour's most radical voices helped set up Scotland United, which organised a rally in George Square, culminating in an oration delivered by black-shirted George Galloway from a corporation bus. It was not the sort of image which helped win over Confused of Corstophine.
And respectability cuts both ways. When the truckers briefly paralysed Britain in the fuel protests of 2000, the assumption was that the Blair Government had been seriously damaged. But just months later it went on to secure another landslide. The real casualties of that time were the Tories, who were seen to be flirting opportunistically with street protests by piling in behind the truckers' demands. The Conservative Party which offered itself to voters in 2001 didn't appear like a respectable alternative Government, it seemed keener on acting as a vehicle for a rainbow coalition of hunters, truckers and others driven to act out of distraction by Labour. And as such, it forfeited the votes of sober, phlegmatic, moderate Middle Britain.
It may be a source of frustration to those whose politics are driven by molten passion, but I find it quite reassuring that the British act as they do. The tendency to award victory in any political dispute to the side which prefers gentle reason, protracted debate and punctiliously detailed argument rather than the side which hurls food at its opponents is something I feel rather proud of.
If that sometimes makes our politics appear dull, well, as that other Chinese proverb reminds us, if someone wants you to live in interesting times they are actually subjecting you to a terrible curse...
Michael Gove is Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
